About Nina Croft

Nina Croft grew up in the north of England. After training as an accountant, she spent four years working as a volunteer in Zambia which left her with a love of the sun and a dislike of 9-5 work. She then spent a number of years mixing travel (whenever possible) with work (whenever necessary) but has now settled down to a life of writing and picking almonds on a remote farm in the mountains of southern Spain.
Nina writes all types of romance often mixed with elements of the paranormal and science fiction.

Someone recently asked me—if I could go anywhere this summer, where would I like to go? I answered—can I stay at home, please?

But then, I’m writing this sitting in the shade of an almond tree on a mountain overlooking the Mediterranean. It’s the middle of a Spanish summer, it’s hot, and I love it!

Summer is my favorite time of year.

I come from the north of England. Growing up, I yearned for the sun, and when I started reading romances in my early teens, I was always drawn to the ones with hot, sultry settings and with tall, dark, handsome heroes; Greeks, Italians, Spaniard’s, all hot-blooded and spectacularly rich (owning their own island always helps). I dreamed of Spanish summers and of one day lying on a sun-kissed Mediterranean beach with a stunningly gorgeous, very-nearly-naked hero of my own. He’d be all golden skin and rippling muscles, and one look from his dark eyes would melt me into a puddle in the sand.

So, at eighteen I headed south in search of a real summer.

I never found my Mediterranean hero, but I did find a lovely English guy instead. We spent a lot of time travelling when I was younger but when it came to settling down, it was hardly surprising that I ended up not far from the Mediterranean. In fact, I now live on a farm in the mountains of Southern Spain, which looks down onto the Mediterranean Sea.

It’s a remote area of mountains and steep rugged gorges, where mules still plough the small vineyards, and mains electricity is something they have in the towns. We have no near neighbors and the nearest shop is nearly an hour away. I share the farm with my husband, my horse, two goats, four dogs, three cats, a three-legged Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, and a handful of chickens (so it’s just as well we like staying at home).

I love the area, the people, the food, the fiestas, and the summers…

It’s also a fabulously inspiring place and it’s not unsurprising that I now find a few of those smoldering heroes slipping into my own work.
Even in my science fiction romance, Break Out, which takes place over a thousand years in the future, and in a distant solar system, the hero, Ricardo Sanchez, comes from Spain. And he’s hot—just like the summers here.

So where would you spend your ideal summer…home or somewhere more exotic? And who would you spend it with? Let me know and all comments will be entered into a draw to win a $5 gift card and an ecopy of my soon to be released contemporary romance, Losing Control.

Nina Croft grew up in the north of England. After training as an accountant, she spent four years working as a volunteer in Zambia which left her with a love of the sun and a dislike of 9-5 work. She then spent a number of years mixing travel (whenever possible) with work (whenever necessary) but has now settled down to a life of writing and picking almonds on a remote farm in the mountains of southern Spain.
Nina writes all types of romance often mixed with elements of the paranormal and science fiction.

I may be being less than romantic here, but I decided to take a look at fictional weddings that don’t go quite as planned. There’s a whole load of preparation goes into the happy day and consequently a lot can go wrong. Accidents happen, natural disasters, or maybe even deliberate sabotage. Occasionally, the bride or groom don’t even make it to the ceremony. They don’t turn up either by accident or design—perhaps they’ve gone to the wrong church, or the car’s broken down, they’ve been kidnapped or just changed their minds.

But my favorite potential for disaster has to be when the minister speaks that sentence…

First, I am required to ask anyone present who knows a reason why these persons may not lawfully marry, to declare it now…

Aren’t you always holding your breath waiting for someone in the congregation to jump up and declare? The one that leaps into my mind is the almost wedding scene from Jane Eyre…so sad!

“The marriage cannot go on. I declare an impediment…Mr Rochester is a married man.”

And while not everyone has a mad wife locked in the attic, there are a whole array of other impediments that could come to light…

Then of course we have those people who change their minds at the last minute:

N, will you take N to be your wife? Will you love her, comfort her, honour her and protect her and forsaking all others be faithful to her as long as you both shall live?

Er…No.

How about Four weddings and a Funeral when Hugh Grant’s character is about to marry Duckface? They get as far as the altar, but in the end he can’t go through with it. And anyone remember Private Benjamin? That was definitely an example of where saying ‘no’ was the right thing to do. But more often, if the wedding doesn’t take place, it’s not a good thing. One of the saddest for me was Zander and Anya’s wedding from Buffy, when Zander changes his mind. Anya ends up walking down the aisle alone in tears – aww!

And things can still go wrong after the vows have been said.

Those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder.

The internet seems to have been awash with reactions to the recent wedding on Game of Thrones (which I haven’t yet seen!). By all accounts, the “red wedding” is pretty horrific and very rarely, even in fiction, do we come across quite such a drastic end to the celebrations.

And I’ll leave you with my all-time favorite wedding disaster—Donna’s almost wedding in Dr. Who. She was so indignant, but then she didn’t realize that she’d only narrowly missed being married to some guy who planned to feed her to a giant alien spider…

What are your favorite fictional wedding disasters? Let me know and all comments will be entered in the monthly draw to win an Amazon gift card.

Nina Croft grew up in the north of England. After training as an accountant, she spent four years working as a volunteer in Zambia which left her with a love of the sun and a dislike of 9-5 work. She then spent a number of years mixing travel (whenever possible) with work (whenever necessary) but has now settled down to a life of writing and picking almonds on a remote farm in the mountains of southern Spain.
Nina writes all types of romance often mixed with elements of the paranormal and science fiction.

Hi, I’m Nina Croft and for my first post on Through Heart-Shaped Glasses, I thought I would say a little about how I first started writing and my first book.

I didn’t write when I was younger; probably because I was too busy reading. Then, at the age of twenty-seven, I found myself living in a remote village on the banks of Lake Kariba in Zambia. And almost totally bookless.

For the previous few years, I’d been working in London as an accountant. I was bored and restless (I wanted life to be more like the books I read!) and in desperate need of some sun and some excitement. So together with my brand new husband, I signed on with a charitable organization sending volunteers all over the world.

Lake Kariba is a man-made lake formed when the Zambezi River was dammed in the 1950s. We were working for a charity helping the people displaced when the dam was built and their homes flooded. They were subsistence farmers and fishermen, living in villages dotted along the edge of the lake, and much of my time was spent whizzing around in boats (dodging hippos and crocodiles!)

It was a stunningly beautiful place, but very remote, with no electricity, no TV, no internet and very limited access to books (and this was way before kindles!). For someone used to reading a book a day, it wasn’t long before I was suffering severe withdrawal symptoms.

Even food was a logistical nightmare. A boat ride away was a small supermarket. Unfortunately, it rarely stocked food; on a good day you could buy toilet rolls and toothpaste. We could order beef locally, but it tended to arrive still warm and with the hoof still attached—a little off-putting. Then there was the local dried fish—kapenta—the most disgustingly smelly stuff to ever come out of the water…

Obviously, I needed something to take my mind off the lack of food and books. What I did have was an extremely large laptop provided by the charity (and powered by a solar panel) and it occurred to me that my only solution was to write my own stories. And that started my first venture into writing and resulted in my first partial submission to Harlequin (several years later) called, The Best of Intentions. Sadly (but not surprisingly) it was rejected but with a very positive letter and a compliment slip for if I wanted to try again.

That was my first attempt at writing, but definitely not my last. So are there any major changes in your life that have made you take up something for the very first time?

Nina Croft grew up in the north of England. After training as an accountant, she spent four years working as a volunteer in Zambia which left her with a love of the sun and a dislike of 9-5 work. She then spent a number of years mixing travel (whenever possible) with work (whenever necessary) but has now settled down to a life of writing and picking almonds on a remote farm in the mountains of southern Spain.
Nina writes all types of romance often mixed with elements of the paranormal and science fiction.

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From suspense to sweet or sinfully erotic, or in the past, present or future...we write to entertain our readers. From aspiring to multi-published, we are romance authors, seeing life through our own heart-shaped glasses. Enjoy the view!

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